


If I Had a Box Just for Wishes

by HawkMoth



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Another coda for "Let's Kill Hitler", Gen, Written in September 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawkMoth/pseuds/HawkMoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>If I had a box just for wishes<br/>And dreams that had never come true<br/>The box would be empty except for the memory<br/>Of how they were answered by you</b>
</p>
<p>What the Doctor has done, and what he can't do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Had a Box Just for Wishes

_Oh, she'll come looking for us._

_Yeah, but how? How do people even look for you?_

_Oh, Pond! Haven't you figured that one out yet?_

***

The Doctor can tell they're not sure why he's smiling. He looks at them carefully, and knows that Amy is thinking of battered home boxes and infinitely old cliff faces; that Rory is thinking about phones that aren't tied to earthly networks and things a little more sophisticated than crop circles.

"We will see her again," he promises, knowing it's a stupidly vague assurance.

"Yeah." Amy is terse, outwardly calm. Rory's inner turmoil is evident in his eyes. They join hands, come up the stairs and slip by him. Amy brushes a kiss across his cheek while Rory gives him another conciliatory, manly clap on the shoulder.

They don't have to ask, don't have to explain--they're staying. He watches them finish the walk up the stairs and into the corridor. They're headed for their room, they know it's still there. He suspects they'll curl up in their big, one-level, ladder-less bed and cry each other to sleep.

He steps back down into the console room, allowing himself a heavy sigh. He's dodged another not completely metaphorical bullet, and still has no idea how to escape the one that's already linearly in his past. "Cross that bridge when we come to it," he tells himself. Time always has a way of catching up, and he's starting to believe that despite the reboot he brought about, something is still seriously wrong with the universe and with Time itself.

The scanner is temptingly in reach, but he doesn't look at the Tesselecta records again. Instead he fiddles with the controls, listening to the steady hum and thrum of his TARDIS. It's always a comfort, even when he tells himself he's in no need of any such thing.

He can imagine what Melody felt when she stepped on board, after he told her what she really was. Brash young Mels, her brain wired for hyperness, hadn't felt it. Only River-to-be would have been welcomed home, cosseted and comforted and bathed in that strange, sentient love. "Hello, dear. Did you know you have more than one mother? Let me show you how I work!"

The Doctor laughs to himself. It could have been like that. Or maybe there hadn't been words at all, just reassurance and knowledge placed gently in her mind, still wrapped in love, healing at least some of the damage inflicted over who knew how many years on a helpless, innocent child.

He can't help but wonder: could he have spared her all that, could he have saved her; saved Amy and Rory from heartbreak and anguish and the terrible not-knowing?

(And the knowledge suddenly thrust upon them--the Doctor and their daughter. Their best friend and their child with a future all their own, so very far removed from her parents and any other sort of life they might have hoped for her. "Permission to hug" would be taking on a whole new meaning.)

He can wish and hope and perhaps even pray that it had all been very, very different. River's bitter accusations at Demon's Run had left their mark, even after she'd had one of those mercurial, infuriating mood shifts, all teasing and mysterious, finally telling him what surely was only part of the truth.

But it's impossible to even think of rewriting River's life, past, present or future. Madman with a box or not, he has to be so very careful, especially if Time is going awry in some way he is not yet aware of. (He will not think of the Library. He will never let her know, where or whenever they meet again, what lies ahead for her. And if she will one day know of the fate waiting for him on that lakeshore in the badlands, and keeps it from him, deep inside he understands why.)

His wishes don't matter. He can't use his wonderful blue box, full of memories past and memories not yet made, to change a story that's still being written. He can't use love as an excuse to alter Time. 

Leaving River in the care of the Sisters, letting her heal and grow into the amazing person he can no longer deny he loves, had been the only thing to do. The _right_ thing to do. What he can wish is that one day soon Amy and Rory will know and fully accept that, too, and forgive him.

The console vibrates under his fingertips, and the humming around him rises and falls in an almost questioning way. "Yes, old girl. I'm all right," he whispers, and the sound resumes its normal tone.

River will find her way. If the guidebook he has left her is nothing but blank pages, she will fill them in no time at all with all she learns and all the adventures (and misadventures, he doesn't doubt) which wait on the path she will choose for herself. By herself.

One wish will come true. Someday she will be the River who loves him. Despite everything else, he has that to look forward to, the day she comes looking for her parents and her Doctor.

He smiles again, in anticipation, and sets the TARDIS in flight, letting her choose the course which will lead them all to that day.

******

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics from Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle."
> 
> Quoted dialogue from "Let's Kill Hitler."


End file.
